Raspberry Bread

About This Raspberry Bread Recipe

This is a quick bread made with fresh raspberries folded into the batter. A wonderful way to infuse the loaf with raspberry essence is to use a flavorful raspberry ale, just like you would use a beer with biscuity notes to make classic beer bread.

If you cannot find any raspberry ale you can substitute with buttermilk or if you feel so inclined with chocolate stout and fold chocolate chips together with the raspberries.

What You Need to Make a Raspberry Loaf

Let's start with the basic recipe and move on to the twists and customization ideas.

To whip up the raspberry bread batter you'll need:

• Wet ingredients: eggs, olive oil and buttermilk or raspberry ale or buttermilk. Using raspberry ale practically ensures that every bite is infused with raspberry essence, it is so worth trying. 
• Dry ingredients: all purpose flour, baking soda, salt and brown sugar
• fresh raspberries to fold into the batter
• if you want to impart a chocolate flavor add cacao and dark chocolate chips to the list
• by way of equipment you don't even need to use an electric mixer. Just a mixing bowl, a whisk or a fork and a spatula to gently fold in the raspberries. Add a loaf pan and a sheet of parchment paper and you are all set.

The Raspberry Wheat Ale

If you are determined to go with raspberry ale, raspberry wheat is not your only option. You can also use a raspberry saison, a raspberry blonde and even a sour ale like Framboise lambic. All of them will impart a pleasant flavor to support the fruit.

I happened upon the Eddyline Brewing Raspberry Wheat starring in the video last week. We were getting ready to hike the gorgeous wilderness near A-Basin in Colorado and stopped by a store in Dillon that carried it. As soon as I tasted it during the hike I knew it would fold perfectly into a breakfast raspberry bread. Said and done.

It is an extremely refreshing ale, ABV 4.8 %, bright and crisp and the fermentation with fresh raspberries lends it a gorgeous pink color and slight tartness in addition to aggressive fruit flavor.  Simply destined for enjoyment - both the drinking and the baking kind.

Serving Suggestions

First things first - while Chris and I would never judge anyone for having a glass of wheat ale for breakfast (seems like half of Bavaria regularly does so) we are all for strong coffee with this raspberry bread. The earthy flavor of espresso lends depth to the dark chocolate chips and uplifts the raspberries... Soo good together.

Keep in mind that this is not a raspberry cake, it is a raspberry breakfast loaf and therefore it is not as sugar loaded as you may expect a cake to be. Which means only one thing - you have room to play with sweet toppings.

My favorite way to enjoy fruit loaves like this is to shamelessly slather them with honey butter, just like this Peach Ale Breakfast Loaf.

I do recommend it but I also urge you to consider these other tried and true suggestions:

• dust the loaf with confectioners sugar
• drizzle slices with maple syrup or raspberry syrup (especially homemade)
• add a scoop of vanilla ice-cream
• drizzle with warm vanilla sauce
• drizzle with warm chocolate sauce
• glaze with a raspberry wheat ale glaze - just follow the example of our Dunkelweizen Banana Bread and whip up the same glaze with confectioners sugar and a bit of raspberry ale. I demonstrate how and provide more detail in the video and recipe card for this loaf.

If you somehow end up with leftover pieces...Here is an idea - make a raspberry bread pudding! It is easy - here is what you need to do.

• First cut the bread in bite size pieces and place them on a plate; cover with a breathable cotton kitchen towel and let them dry out. Overnight is great.
• When ready to bake your raspberry bread pudding - heat the oven to 350 F, arrange the dried out pieces in an appropriately sized well-greased baking dish or a small cast iron skillet and proceed to make a custard.
• Whisk a couple of eggs (1, 2 or 3, depending on how much bread you have leftover), add sugar (to taste, couple of tablespoons is a good starting point) and heavy cream as needed to get to a thick-ish custard.
• Pour the custard over the bread in the baking dish and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Twists on Raspberry Bread

I am leaving you with several ideas on how to customize the basic recipe and I am sure that you'll have many more. As easy as it is to make this loaf, why not bake it several times, changing things up until you identify your absolute favorite?

• use all raspberries, 1.5 times the recipe amount (no choc chips and cacao); add ½ teaspoon lemon extract to the batter and once baked drizzle with raspberry sauce and sprinkle with fresh lemon zest
• use a chocolate stout or porter to make it more chocolaty
• use yogurt instead of ale or buttermilk and make it as a raspberry yogurt loaf (go with 1 ½ cups instead of one 1 cup)
• use white choc chips, skip the cacao, add 2 tablespoon condensed milk and bake yourself a raspberry and white chocolate loaf
• make it just the same but use your muffin tin or mini loaf pans
• fold in nuts instead of chocolate chips